Sheila S. Robles

The Project

Sheila’s (she/her) project will focus on serving unaccompanied minors in Special Immigration Juvenile cases (SIJS). With the support of the Public Law Center, Shelia will serve underrepresented, indigent immigrant clients subjected to abuse, neglect, and abandonment by their primary caretakers.

Fellowship Plans

Sheila will significantly increase the number of minor children helped who are eligible for SIJS. By focusing on unaccompanied minors, she will be improving the lives and futures of individuals who cannot return to their homelands due to history of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. In doing so, she will help create a new narrative and potential for the minor children to heal from past trauma and create new life goals from a place of safety and wellbeing.

Sheila understands what it’s like to be a young person with no recourse during some of the most difficult times in life. Her experiences growing up led her to her career path, searching for empowerment. She hopes to empower clients early in their lives giving them the tools to make decisions that will lead them to success years before she could.

The Project

Jordan’s Equal Justice Works Fellowship seeks to address the legal needs of Californians with disabilities concerning wildfire disasters.

Jordan will work on Disability Rights California’s approach to wildfires and issues stemming from these disasters, such as Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events, housing displacement and a lack of accessible and affordable housing, emergency transportation, and the negative health impacts of poor air quality. All of these issues disproportionately affect people with access and functional needs. These vulnerable and underserved populations require thoughtful inclusion at all levels of disaster resilience planning. Jordan will be responding to the legal needs of the disability community throughout California before, during, and after wildfire disasters.

Jordan has lived experience with disability and disaster resilience. Having grown up in a disaster-prone region of the southeastern United States and witnessed the aftermath of natural disasters, Jordan will use this personal understanding to inform their work.

Fellowship Plans

Jordan will provide outreach on wildfire disaster resiliency by hosting accessible clinics, training, and direct legal aid to people with disabilities and others in the access and functional needs community. They will work with grassroots community groups throughout the state to strengthen existing disaster resource centers and coalitions.

Media

The Inspiration

The Inspiration

The Project

In California, people who live in rural areas have little-to-no access to legal services. Julie’s project aimed to fill the legal services gap in rural California through the Rural Education and Access to the Law (REAL) Program.

The Inspiration

The Project

In California, people who live in rural areas have little-to-no access to legal services. Candace’s project at OneJustice focused on filling the legal services gap in rural California through the Justice Bus Project. On Justice Bus trips, Candace educated urban law students and pro bono attorneys about the unique challenges low-income people in rural California face trying to access legal services, and took them to rural areas to volunteer at free legal clinics for low-income clients.

The Project

Marina is improving health care access for indigent newcomer refugees in Alameda County through community outreach and education, policy advocacy, litigation, and direct client representation.

The overwhelming majority of refugees resettling in Alameda County arrive from extremely unstable country conditions where they were subjected to displacement and extensive trauma. As a result, they are plagued with disproportionately high rates of chronic, but preventable, illnesses. Burmese and Bhutanese refugees in particular face poverty, staggering unemployment rates, and social and linguistic isolation upon arrival. Though initially all refugees receive eight months of medical assistance, virtually all single adults are disqualified thereafter. Under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), single adults are now eligible for health care coverage. Newcomer refugees, however, need help to navigate the hurdles to accessing public benefits and advocacy to ensure they remain eligible for assistance while beginning their new life is the U.S.

Fellowship Highlights

During their Fellowship, Marina has:

• Successfully advocated for California to continue the Refugee Medical Assistance (RMA) program, which provides benefits for more than 5,000 refugees across the state
• Collaborated on an alert to refugee resettlement agencies in California advising them to pre-enroll refugees in Medi-Cal under the ACA to avoid gaps in health care coverage
• Launched thriving partnerships with community organizations and health care providers serving the refugee population in order to identify potential clients
• Collaborated on legislative and policy advocacy at the state and local levels to safeguard and enhance health care resources for refugees
• Trained pro bono attorneys from Hewlett-Packard and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius to participate in a clinic to help refugees transition from RMA to Medi-Cal

The Project

Cynthia Tyler worked towards universal representation for unaccompanied minors in removal proceedings. While representing the minors, Cynthia Tyler hoped to make the immigration court more efficient. Unaccompanied minors are among the most vulnerable populations of immigrants, as many of them are fleeing violence and poverty. This work is important to connect them to services and help them achieve their goals in living a better life.